Groupman
Supply chains are under constant pressure. Rising costs, fragmented procurement, counterfeit risks, stock-outs, delayed deliveries, and limited access to affordable financing all directly affect patient outcomes and the sustainability of medical institutions. For individual organisations in any industry like the health industry, hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies, negotiating favorable prices and reliable supply terms on their own is increasingly difficult.
This is where Groupman Group Purchasing Organization automation solution plays a transformative role.
A Groupman brings together multiple supply chain players from the demand side and the supply side under a single purchasing umbrella, aggregating demand to negotiate better pricing, improved payment terms, assured quality, and priority access from manufacturers and distributors. By leveraging collective buying power, Groupman turn scale into savings and coordination into resilience. Members benefit not only from lower unit costs, but also from shared standards, vetted suppliers, and stronger bargaining positions across the medical supply value chain.
Groupman can be applied in healthcare to enable hospitals, clinics and dispensaries aggregate their medical supplies orders for economies of scale to negotiate better prices with medical suppliers, distributors and manufacturers.
Groupman can be applied in the consumer market to enable members of public pool their purchasing power and buy goods and services at a cheaper rate than non-group members. This business model has been used in USA by a company called CostCo successfully.
Benefits of Groupman System
For industry associations and their members, an effective Group Purchasing Automation platform delivers tangible value across multiple dimensions:
- Cost Savings:
Bulk purchasing and negotiated contracts significantly reduce the cost of medicines, consumables, and equipment. - Quality Assurance:
Centralized supplier vetting helps protect members from substandard or counterfeit products. - Supply Reliability:
Coordinated demand forecasting and distributor engagement reduce stock-outs and delivery delays. - Operational Efficiency:
Simplified procurement processes free medical staff to focus on care delivery rather than supplier management. - Access to Credit and Incentives:
GPOs structure financing, loyalty programs, and rebates that individual members would struggle to secure independently. - Market Access for Suppliers:
Manufacturers and distributors gain predictable demand and access to a large, verified customer base.
In short, Groupman align economic efficiency with industry impact, creating a win-win ecosystem for all players.
Group Members e.g. Medical drugs suppliers like Manufacturers, Distributors and Medical drug consumers like Hospitals, Clinics and Pharmacies within the GPOs market can then apply online to register for membership to the Group Purchasing network whereupon they are required to submit supporting documents and geo-location of their business premises as part of the Know-Your-Customer (KYC) on-boarding process as shown below:
Step 1 the member fills their business details, indicate if they are supplier or consumer, contact person etc
Step 2 the applicant fills in their location details including GPS coordinates of their main premise for physical visit by GPO relationship manager for due diligence
Step 3 member fills in their Contact person details and indicates if they need financing for their medical orders
Step 4 applicant uploads the registration documents required per medical facility type
The system has a Customer Relationship Management module in the backend for tracking new member applications in order for group purchasing organization administration staff to perform due diligence before approving the business to join the network. Once the member submits their expression of interest to join the GPO, the management team review the member profile for due diligence before approving their profile and assigning credit limit for the member to start enjoying use of the platform:
On approval as a new member, Groupman system will send an encrypted email to the member’s email address with the link to activate their account and change the default system generated password for future secure login.
On approval and login, a member can now search for and compare products based on attributes like distributor, manufacturer, price, discount, strength, size, therapeutic class and manufacturing category in order to make an informed choice before ordering as shown:
If a member does not have sufficient funds, they are able to save the products they want to buy on a wishlist for future ordering otherwise they have the option of paying with credit financed by banks, loyalty points, bank account or mobile money such as mpesa during checkout.
If a member does not have sufficient funds, they are able to save the products they want to buy on a wishlist for future ordering otherwise they have the option of paying with credit financed by banks, loyalty points, bank account or mobile money such as mpesa during checkout.
The order management module enables the Member, Relationship Manager, Distributor and Manufactuer monitor the post-order process and have a real-time update on the stage where each of their orders has reached in the order fulfillment journey for transparency.
As such, overdue orders and out of stock requests can be easily identified and appropriate remedial action taken to ensure timely delivery of members orders.
The ERP supports integration with last mile delivery logistics providers like Glovo or Leta.ai to seamlessly and transparently move the goods from the suppliers pickup location to the consumers drop off location with live tracking.
The ERP upports payments by members to Groupman for orders placed online via the following channels:
- Cash
- Mobile money e.g. mpesa
- Electronics Funds Transfers e.g. via bank rtgs
- Credit facilities with interest